It has often been said that the prime object of the Society was and is the crushing of Protestantism.[1] This assertion is proved to be false by the life of Ignatius, and this proof is strengthened by the Constitutions, the Papal Approbations, and the whole history of the Order. The Papal letters and the Constitutions assign as the special object of the Society: "The progress of souls in a good life and knowledge of religion; the propagation of faith by public preaching, the Spiritual Exercises and works of charity, and particularly the instruction of youth and ignorant persons in the Christian religion."[2] The Protestants are not as much as mentioned in this Papal document which states the end and the means of the Society. Pius V., in 1571, highly praised the educational work of Jesuit schools and granted them ample privileges.[3] Here again it is not said that these schools or the Society are directed against Protestantism.
The evidence is so strong that Professor Huber, one of the bitterest opponents of the Order, declares: "At the time when Ignatius conceived the idea of founding a new order, he had not heard as much as the name of the German Reformer. Even more than a decade later he seems to have paid little heed to the
- ↑ "To resist the encroachments of Protestantism, that followed the diffusion of instruction among the people, Loyola organized his teaching corps of Catholic zealots; and his mode of competition for purposes of moral, sectarian and political control has covered the earth in all Christian countries with institutions of learning." Compayré, History of Pedagogy, p. 163.
- ↑ In the first approbation of the Institute, by the Brief Regimini militantis of Pope Paul III., September 27, 1540. (Cf. Litterae Apostolicae, Florentiae, 1892, p. 4.)
- ↑ Litterae Apostolicae, l. c., p. 44.
